REBELS TOLERATED TOO LONG.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 177, 26 May 1916, Page 2 (Supplement)

REBELS TOLERATED TOO LONG.

ALWAYS AGAINST GOVERNMENT. Chaplain Captain Brccn. a young Roman Catholic pr.est, who enlisted in London and arrived with the invalided soldiers at Sydney recently, ii- a native of Killarney and knows his Irish history well. Speaking to a "Sun" reporter ot the Sinn J'','in rebell.on m iU.I in, he said be wan well acquainted with the history of the movement m Ireland, and believed that it should have been smashed ten years ago. "ft is not in any way a religious movement," he said, "and people should at once their winds of any idea of that kind. It., adherents claim thai it i- the young intellectual spirit oi Ireland. They are anti-Redmond and anti-National", and arc more akin to anarcbicts than anything els'\ Gr liitbs. their loader, is

editor nf the paper " Sinn Fein." and is a clever, capable and highly educated man. But he is o crank, who would welcome a rope for his neck, because he think- he would die a martyr. Griffiths and the ro-t of the Sinn Fofilers contend thai tlie future of Inland is : n their keeping, and that Mr Redmond and his friends in Parliament

are merely women who sit there twiddling their thumb-. In a word. the Sinn Feineiv are separatists, and will not be satisfied with Home Rid" as we understand it. They are oppo-od to constitutional government in any form."

Captain l!n on. in reply In questions ,diii orning Mr ii":MT Ca-ement. sjiul the rising in Dublin was not an accident, but it was premature. Had Cai-e.

ment ii" 1 - been captured, he sad. the outbreak would have incurred a little later and would have bei n more serious, lie felt sure however, that the rising would be (piickly suppressed, for the vast majority of the people of Ireland were loyal. The British Government, he declared, bad tolerated the Sinn Frin movement too long, but it would now I"' crushed.